


A Day In The Life

by DracoCustos



Category: Firefly, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoCustos/pseuds/DracoCustos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was 7AM on Christmas Eve, the Christmas party was at 8PM, and there are Reavers eating mushrooms in his backyard. Or, a typical Wednesday for Carlos and Cecil. Written for flipthefrog for the fandomsecrets secret santa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day In The Life

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, let me start by saying the only connection this fic really has to Firefly is that I intended the people around Night Vale to be Reavers, but since I never call them that, feel free to think of them as whatever you want. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I'm super glad my recipient liked it. Happy holidays everyone!

7AM. Carlos had been up for hours, sipping his coffee and reading the news to see what was going on in the weird little town he’d started to think of as home, by the time Cecil wandered through the living room dressed in the furry pants he’d worn to work the night before. He mumbled something that might have been a hello, the usually glowing and slightly pulsing soundforms that crawled over his skin unlit and still, and disappeared through the door leading to the kitchen, where he could be heard clattering around for what Carlos assumed was a coffee cup. “Counter,” he said in a tone loud enough to be heard over the noise, and it stopped almost immediately, followed by a slightly louder mumble that might have been either _ thank you _ or _ love you _ , though with Cecil it was entirely possible he’d tried to say both at once and ended up with gibberish again.

He returned a few minutes later, carrying his coffee and settling on the sofa in a way that reminded Carlos more of a kitten than a human being, the soundforms beginning to flicker a bit as he drank half the cup in a single gulp. Carlos made a mental note to look into getting them an insulated carafe to keep in the living room so they’d have to get up much less often.

“Feeling better?” he asked, trying harder than was really necessary not to laugh at Cecil, with his vivid purple hair currently sticking up at so many odd angles that it may as well have been an octopus on his head – and that had been bad enough the first time.

“Much,” Cecil mumbled back, a single soundform winding up from near his vocal chords, flashing once, and then winding its way into nothingness towards his chin. “No science today?”

“No, no science,” Carlos responded, trying to take a drink from his coffee cup, only to discover he’d emptied it at some point. Figures. He got up and just retrieved the pot, refilling his own cup and topping Cecil’s off before just sitting it on the table. One of them would want more before it went cold, he was sure of it. “I’m sorry you thought you needed to be up.”

Cecil grumbled in a way that continued to remind Carlos far too much of a cranky kitten, but he smiled as he did it, so he pushed the thought away for now. He was silent for a long moment, then screwed up his face in concentration. “Did you invite someone for coffee this morning?”

“No…?” What an odd question, Carlos thought, but didn’t voice that opinion. “I thought we’d have enough socializing at the party tonight. Why?”

“The woman in the yard seemed to be wearing an appropriate amount of blood for a casual morning coffee date.”

There had been a time that hearing about a woman standing in his yard covered in blood would have been something Carlos worried about, but as it was, he only sat his cup on the table and went to look for himself. The woman was still there – at least, Carlos assumed it was the same woman, but didn’t want to ask Cecil to confirm it for him right yet – holding a large, bleeding chunk of mushroom as she chewed on it with a nearly feral look on her face. As he watched, she flicked from view for the span of a heartbeat, then for the span of several, and then vanished completely and stayed that way, the half-eaten mushroom dropping to the ground with what he assumed would be a very wet sounding thump. He checked his watch – 7:22AM, for all that time meant in Night Vale – checked the note on the fridge that said 8PM, the time the Night Vale Community Radio Sponsor Christmas Party began, and shrugged his shoulders. Just over twelve hours was plenty of time for him to figure out the problem with mysterious women eating mushrooms in his backyard.

“Time to go to work?” Cecil asked, his usual cheery glow fully restored, as he wandered back into the living room for his coffee, taking a moment to casually check out the front windows as well. There was no evidence anyone was there, or had ever been there, ready for a coffee date or otherwise.

“’Fraid so,” Carlos said, drinking more of his coffee before handing the cup to Cecil to finish if he wished. From where he stood, he could see the kitchen window as the woman flickered into and then out of view again. This time, she was very decidedly _ not _ chewing on a mushroom.

Noon. People had been calling the radio station reporting more strange people in town, though Carlos had only turned the radio on so the lab wouldn’t be so quiet, what with his entire staff having the day off for the holidays and all. Old Woman Josie, out by the car lot, had been one of them, offended as could be by the strange people who’d tried to eat one of the many Erikas. He turned the radio off and set off to see her, passing more of the strange people that the people of Night Vale seemed to primarily be ignoring, or occasionally scolding for being rude and biting without permission. That had just made the wild people mad, from what he could tell.

“Carlos! Do come in, would you like some lemonade?” Josie had asked the moment he’d started up her walk, the wild people currently either stymied by the gate or terrified of the very angry-seeming Erikas flanking it, because they remained outside while he managed to get inside. “Oh, what a foolish question, of course you do. Lunch too, perhaps? You’re far too thin, you and Cecil both.”

“Sorry,” he said, a practiced response he’d learned to give his own grandmothers before his relocation to Night Vale, but Josie had always seen right through it. “I’m really not here for lunch, I’m afraid, I w-”

“Oh, don’t bring up those horrible things, dear boy. They tore up my roses before Erika and Erika removed them,” she gestured to the destroyed rose beds near the gate.

“You said they tried to _ eat _ Erika?”

“They did. Tore a nice piece right out of him, and then she just disappeared.” Carlos was reminded of the woman in his backyard, chewing on the bleeding thing that was very much not a mushroom. That was only slightly unsettling. It was then he noticed the somehow still smoldering piles of ash around the yard; the Erikas had retaliated for something, though he wasn’t sure if it was the attempt at cannibalism or trampling Josie’s roses. He sipped at his lemonade as he watched them, occasionally flickering out of existence, only to appear again a few feet away before disappearing in a flash of pure darkness.

Good for the Erikas. It was good for them to get some exercise from time to time. He watched them for what he thought was just an hour, but on checking his watch, it was really closer to four in the afternoon, and his stomach rumbled angrily about not being fed that day. He would stop by the lab on the way home and tweak a few dials on the spacial distorter, either blocking the wild people out completely or trapping them for the Erikas to pick off at their leisure, and then head home to have dinner with Cecil before they had to go to the party. As he passed the Walmart, someone forced a large bag of St. John’s wort into his hands, and he frowned at it before remembering they would need it to decorate the house before they left for the party, but when he tried to fish money out of his pocket, the person was gone.

“Honey, I’m home,” he shouted when he made it through the front door, his watch reading nearly 5:30PM. The spacial distorter had needed a jump start, and by the time he’d gotten it working, the townsfolk were past offended and well into irritated. Not to mention one of them had tried to eat the Troys.

“I see you’ve saved the day,” Cecil’s voice came from the living room, where he was sitting still in the same pants he’d been in when Carlos left. At least he’d combed his hair. Or really put an octopus on it, but as it didn’t squirm when he leaned in to give him a quick peck, he assumed it’d been combed. It was also an equally vivid shade of red instead of purple.

“Josie still thinks we’re not eating right,” Carlos said as he stretched out on the couch with his head in Cecil’s lap.

“We should have her for dinner some day.” Cecil still glowed, the lights on the soundforms much more magenta than they’d been earlier in the day, but Carlos found the dim light comforting.

“Can we put a tarp down this time? The dining room floor is starting to splinter from the cleanings after our last dinner party, we’d have to completely redo it next time.”


End file.
